Episode 4 of Nolan Investigates Stonewall

[ThisIsJeopardy]

In episode 4, Nolan interviews a person named Owen who identifies as non binary.

Nolan: "Why is the label 'nonbinary' important then, and how do you define it?"

Owen: "Yeah, it's important because it communicates that we're not male and we're not female, that we're different from that. And of course within that community there are lots of micro-labels... But as an overall term 'nonbinary' is important because... it's useful to have that overall grouping term when we are campaigning for our legal rights and legal protections, and that's why 'nonbinary' is so important."

I am astounded by the acknowledgement that it's important to have an adequate overarching term for a group of people who want to campaign for their rights and legal protections. And yet 'women' 'girls' 'female' and 'mother' are all treated as open for erasure or redefinition by anyone who sees fit, and those who would wish to retain the definition and use of those terms and regard them as 'so important' for campaigning and rights, are derided as bigots, dinosaurs, and Nazis.

What would Owen and others in this movement suggest is 'that overall grouping term' which describes the half of the worldwide human population who are born with female reproductive biology?

Do they not need one? Is there no need for this rather large grouping to have an overarching term that refers to all of them and only to them? Is that because this group suffers no oppression on the basis of their common characteristic, unlike the poor, persecuted nonbinary community? Because mutilated babies and child 'brides' and prostituted teenagers and beaten, controlled wives and murdered women don't have the same need to name the common denominator of their oppression? It's 'so important'' that those males and females, who share the common characteristic of having a preference not to be referred to as males or females, have a collective, overarching term so they can discuss their rights, but it's not at all important for all female humans to have such a word?

I'm sorry if this is covered in the very long Nolan podcast thread. I am raging and didn't have time to go through it all, but the hypocrisy and misogyny of this segment made me see red.

*loved.

Owen pops up again in episode 8, you'll be pleased to hear, being interviewed at length with Debbie Hayton, who I know divides the crowd here, but speaks so much sense by contrast to Owen.

I've listened to all ten episodes now. Brilliant. Strongly recommended.

Here's Their Worship. I was a young woman in the early 80s. Nobody would have looked twice at Owen as dressed on the left. Heyday of the New Romantics. Plenty of young men in frilly shirts, lots of makeup, and so on. What happened?

White male seeks oppression and a cause, which they can walk away from whenever it suits, unlike the actually oppressed.

I've listened to nine episodes now.
Is it Owen who insists in an earlier episode that you can't tell a person's chromosomes by looking at them? Completely missing the point that you almost always can, and that's the whole fucking reason sexism is able to exist.
I'm pretty sure what my chromosomes are. I bleed once a month so if it's not XX I'm in trouble.

The irony is that his rejection of maleness has probably somewhat shielded him from the violence most men face and actually resulted in him being safer. Unless he is going out, nailing ten pints of Stella and getting in a scrap, which I'm somewhat sceptical of for some reason.

I think Owen used the example of what if Owen was murdered? Would that be a hate crime?

How can you tell Owen is non-binary from looking at Owen? How can it be a hate crime if the theoretical attacker doesn’t know the person is or isn’t the thing the attacker theoretically hates?

@Fukuraptor

Yes.

It's also the logic of "I don't feel male or female, just myself." "Therefore I am agender non-binary".

Rather than "I don't feel male or female. Maybe the idea of everyone having a gender identity is bullshit."

Yes. Also if you can’t clearly identify males and females, how can you tell what you are NOT identifying as?

@WanderingSoutherner

I've listened to nine episodes now. Is it Owen who insists in an earlier episode that you can't tell a person's chromosomes by looking at them? Completely missing the point that you almost always can, and that's the whole fucking reason sexism is able to exist. I'm pretty sure what my chromosomes are. I bleed once a month so if it's not XX I'm in trouble.

I want to ask people like that, if we cannot tell what sex someone is without knowing their chromosomes, how did humans pick who to mate with before 1906, when sex chromosomes were discovered? Or before 1888, when a German scientist suggested the name "chromosome" for those structures first described in 1842?

I mean sex chromosomes evolved 300 to 200 million years ago. If you visualise that vast amount of time as a clockface, all but less than a tenth of a second of that entire 12 hour clock face has species somehow- miraculously - continuing by a male and a female being finding each other to mate without any knowledge of their sex chromosomes.

How?

If the sex of humans is such a difficult thing to ascertain, where are the arcane rituals designed to overcome that problem? The ceremonial genital inspections before matings? Why has no anthropologist researching today's remaining hunter gatherer societies ever described them?

Could it be that we are hardwired to recognise sex? That we are not monomorphs (a species where both sexes are indistinguishable from one another) but dimorphic beings with clear differences between the sexes in far too many ways to list?

I'm sorry the non-binary mayor is so incapable at a skill that a typical four-year-olds has mastered so well we take it for granted, but why do we all have to pretend the rest of us are equally inept?

@NecessaryScene

I don't feel 5'6" or 6'1", despite clearly being one of those.

I must be non-heightary...

@NecessaryScene 😂👍

I want to ask people like that, if we cannot tell what sex someone is without knowing their chromosomes, how did humans pick who to mate with before 1906, when sex chromosomes were discovered? Or before 1888, when a German scientist suggested the name "chromosome" for those structures first described in 1842?

And, for that matter, how did they know which of the two chromosome configurations were "male" and "female" they discovered XX and XY?

@NecessaryScene 😂👍

On top of not feeling my height, I actually can't tell whether anyone else is "tall" or "short". Those words don't mean anything to me.

I have a friend who says she is 5'1", and very insistent about the 1", and she keeps going on about being "short", but I just can't see it. She's just a person to me.

She does get a bit annoyed when I expect her to get something from the top shelf, but I keep explaining to her that it would be prejudiced to assume she couldn't reach it. But she's got quite an old-fashioned view on the significance of "height categories".

To Owen, and other supporters of gender ideology, women don’t need a term because we have ‘cis’ privilege and therefore aren’t a class of super needy oppressed people...

This seems to be a theme. I remember being struck watching Ben from GNC Centric talk about her experiences in a support group for trans people when she was a teen. The group was mainly middle aged transwomen and teenage transmen. Several of the transwomen repeatedly insisted that the transmen had privilege because they were born female (AKA "AFAB") and therefore didn't have to learn girly mannerisms or struggle to find feminine clothes that fit. She said there was real pressure to defer, to admit guilt, to acknowledge that the transmen had it easy and the transwomen were uniquely oppressed and should be catered to and centred even at the expense of the other members.

Even if you deny the whole concept of women and girls being systemically disadvantaged on the basis of sex, how is it possible NOT to understand that just as you reject and are distressed about being male and desperately want to be female, this other person who you're supposed to be supporting rejects being female and feminine and probably envies your male body, socialisation, access to manly clothes, etc.? There's something missing from these kinds of arguments both in terms of logic and of empathy.

He's an example of those young people who think gender non-conformity is something they invented, instead of realising that it's been going on for millennia, only with men and women daring enough to admit that breaking the rules doesn't make them not of their sex.

It also struck me that gender non-conformity for men is very superficial but very visible. In a western context, gender non-conformity for women was about appearances but also about voting, working, receiving and education, having control of your own property and legal rights. Modern gender ideologues don't see feminism as gender non-conformity. They don't see this as something that women have been battling for centuries, but over far more serious ground.

I agree with a lot of that, Esma, but I would add that a lot of the stereotypical expecations of boys and men in western society are extremely harmful. My hunch is that some boys and men can't live up to the stereotypical macho male they think they should be, and for some reason can't get their heads round being a gender nonconforming male who is happy to be male.

I was very struck once by a remark I once heard about how the only acceptable emotions for boys and men to express openly are anger and amusement/ridicule. Not all families are like that, not all communities, not all individual men and boys, fortunately, but there's a recurring theme in the stories of late-transitioning transwomen that they had very stereotypical, almost hypermasculine upbringings - any or all of all male boarding school, army, Oxbridge colleges at a time when they were still single sex, male-dominated work environment. All the way through, laughed at and worse if they showed any sign of emotion, as that was interpreted as weakness. Trained to toughen up. Explicitly and implicitly trained to see females as the weaker sex and anything coded female as inferior. I surmise that many of them had very domineering fathers or father figures in their lives and found it difficult not to see that as the pattern for how a man should be.

Enough of the amateur psychoanalysis! Not sure how coherent this is.

@Fukuraptor just wanted to say fab name.

@ItsRainingProstateOwners

I think Owen used the example of what if Owen was murdered? Would that be a hate crime?

How can you tell Owen is non-binary from looking at Owen? How can it be a hate crime if the theoretical attacker doesn’t know the person is or isn’t the thing the attacker theoretically hates?

Quite!

And what if Owen were to commit a crime?

"We are searching for a suspect who is a non binary person, white, in their twenties with a middle class accent in relation to the crime" (I soo want to put crime of misgendering....)

Seeing as nowadays we can't tell a person's sex without genital inspections, how the hell do we tell who is a non binary person?

Could it be that we are hardwired to recognise sex? That we are not monomorphs (a species where both sexes are indistinguishable from one another) but dimorphic beings with clear differences between the sexes in far too many ways to list?

Given that swans are monomorphs, and presumably haven’t mastered the speech patterns that allow them to announce their “gender” and sexuality, I wonder how they manage the whole finding a partner for breeding thing. It’s almost as if nature allows species to be functional in terms of sex, even when it would appear to be quite complex.

I still want to know if clownfish can change gender.

Or are they stuck with the same gender after changing sex?

Should we be transitioning them after the sex change to reaffirm their gender?

Reminds me of the case of convicted rapist Craig/Lisa Hauxwell a few years ago. Went on the run before sentencing. The Derby Telegraph‘s headline read ‘Have you seen missing woman spotted in Derbyshire dressed as a man?'

I did find this episode very funny to be honest. I thought it was genius to just let Owen speak at length with the occasional very pertinent question thrown in (genderfuck was hilarious). Owen actually sounds like quite an intelligent and articulate person and it struck me that actually you have to be in order to try to explain such utter nonsense otherwise you would come unstuck very quickly. It underlines the extent to which gender ideology is truly a luxury belief and those who are pushing it are as far from marginalised and oppressed as it is possible to be. I do think it's a shame that Owen didn't decide to use their position of privilege to do something more useful for the world.

@AnyOldPrion

Could it be that we are hardwired to recognise sex? That we are not monomorphs (a species where both sexes are indistinguishable from one another) but dimorphic beings with clear differences between the sexes in far too many ways to list?

Given that swans are monomorphs, and presumably haven’t mastered the speech patterns that allow them to announce their “gender” and sexuality, I wonder how they manage the whole finding a partner for breeding thing. It’s almost as if nature allows species to be functional in terms of sex, even when it would appear to be quite complex.

I have always thought I could tell male from female swans so when you said that I wondered if I was deceiving myself so did a quick search. Although both have the same colour plummage, there are subtle differences at sexual maturity (males have larger black bumps - called blackberries on the top of their beak and wider necks than females) so I wasn't imagining it!

Bluetits are hard to tell apart too, the males can be a bit brighter but it would be helpful if they perched next to each other for comparison.

I can't remember if it was bluetits or another species but I'm sure I have seen Chris Packham talk about animals that don't appear dimorphic to us, sometimes have obvious differences in a part of the colour spectrum we can't see.

Plus pheromones, scent and behaviour probably help.

@Redshoeblueshoe

Episode 4 was very hard going. I'm not going to listen to it again. But I can't be the only person who thought it was hilarious when Owen thanked Nolan for listening.

I did manage to listen to it a second time, and I think it was funnier the second time around. My laughter was constrained by the shock of someone being above toddler-age and making so little sense the first time around, but second time I was less shocked and more amused (whilst also being utterly repelled and disgusted at Owen and his male body's insane and bigoted beliefs.

@MarshmallowSwede

Exactly what rights do they not have? Can someone please explain this to me? I am genuinely not understanding what rights someone who is gender non conforming does not have right now.

They can dress as they want. They have access to the same healthcare. Same access to education. So what rights do they not have? Being able to go into the women’s toilets? That’s not a right.. demanding biology be ingnored for the sake of feelings?

The right to single sex spaces that belong to people of the opposite sex.

The right to insult people for seeking debate.

The right to have their views publicly respected and indeed praised, even when those views are disrespectful to others and objectively not worthy of praise.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Owen pops up again in episode 8, you'll be pleased to hear, being interviewed at length with Debbie Hayton, who I know divides the crowd here, but speaks so much sense by contrast to Owen.

I've listened to all ten episodes now. Brilliant. Strongly recommended.

Here's Their Worship. I was a young woman in the early 80s. Nobody would have looked twice at Owen as dressed on the left. Heyday of the New Romantics. Plenty of young men in frilly shirts, lots of makeup, and so on. What happened?

The difference now is that when I see someone like that my immediate reaction is "I expect that person is a hateful misogynist and homphobe with batshit crazy idea"... only 3 or 4 years back I'd have gone "cool, I love seeing people who are a bit different. I bet he's a bit more interesting than the average boring person in this far-too-conservative town".

Owen speaks at the start about experiencing 'euphoria' at the age of twelve when dressing in a woman or girl's clothes. I know what Owen is describing there.

The entire waffle is a lesson in gaslighting someone not to listen to the evidence of their own ears. Owen calls it 'the language games we play as a community'. Owen is campaigning so that the law, passports and other identity documents like birth certificates will aid in these efforts to make people ignore obvious reality. I hope if Owen has a girlfriend that these linguistic tricks are not employed in conversations and arguments with her.